The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a key player in civil liberties issues online and elsewhere, has asked a federal judge to rescind an order blocking a Web operator from directing Web surfers to sites which publish or link to sites publishing instructions on how to crack DVD security codes.
The EFF filed the request May 4. The Motion Picture Association of America got a court order in January to stop Eric Corley and his 2600 Enterprises from posting the controversial DeCSS encryption crack online. The MPAA has since argued that he tried to beat the first order by urging about 300 Web operators to publish or link to the instructions.
Corley and his attorneys say the movie industry is violating free speech. EFF attorney Robin Gross agrees, calling the move an "unprecedented restraint on speech."
The uproar began with the original MPAA suit in federal court in late 1999, at about the time the DVD Copy Control Association sued in California against Web operators and hundreds more unidentified defendants. They both charge DeCSS - the brainchild of a Norwegian teenager - violates copyright laws by publishing a DVD descrambler which allows users to download DVD films onto unauthorized systems like computers using the Linux platform.
No defendant, though, has yet been accused of swapping movie files at will, says CNET.
Defense attorneys in the California suit plan to file an appeal against a previous court order. The Corley case begins in early December.
